WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Brett Guthrie (KY-02), Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, delivered the following opening statement at today’s Full Committee Markup.

Insert YouTube

Chairman Guthrie's opening statement as prepared for delivery: 

“Thank you, Chairman Latta, and the members of the Committee for your legislative work to unleash American energy and make our electric grid more reliable and affordable. 

Today, the full Committee is taking up 13 bills that will lead to the production of more American energy, remove regulatory burdens to electric generation, and help us win the race to power AI for the good of the country. 

We have had multiple hearings this Congress already during which we heard that the U.S. must be able to power our technology future. For the U.S. to win the AI race, we need to produce significantly more 365/24/7 power to run AI and data centers. 

We heard from witnesses that not all electrons are a one-for-one substitute, and that we should not be taking baseload power plants offline without sufficient and comparable replacements.  

I would remind my colleagues, if AI data centers running the world’s most advanced models could run on just wind and solar power, they would be doing so already. 

To fuel American energy abundance, lower prices for American households, and make the U.S. more energy secure, the bills before us today address obstacles to an efficient and cost-effective infrastructure development. This important legislation also identifies opportunities to expand our refining capacity, improve our hydropower permitting process, secure our energy supply chains, increase LNG exports, and streamline the permitting of natural gas pipelines.   

In addition, the bills before us today will ensure timely interconnection of dispatchable resources and rightly place the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, as the federal authority on reliability to prevent a future Clean Power Plan 3.0. 

I am disappointed that more of these bills are not bipartisan, because winning the AI race and guaranteeing we have sufficient amounts of the right kind of power to do it should not be a partisan issue. 

I agree that wind and solar should be part of our overall energy mix – but I disagree with the idea that wind and solar with storage are going to provide the type of power needed to run AI data centers. Most energy experts and the technology companies themselves have not supported that approach either because wind and solar with storage do not provide the necessary reliability. 

Time is of the essence, and I hope my Democratic colleagues will recognize the critical importance of this issue and work with us to enact legislation that puts our country on track to beat China in the race to AI dominance. 

Thank you and I yield back."

###